It was an extraordinary photograph, taken in extraordinary circumstances, which cast a surprising new light on a public figure.

An aspiring young photographer called Naomi Goggin captured David Miliband and his wife Louise on the day last month that he announced he wouldn’t be standing for Labour’s front bench after being defeated by his younger brother in the leadership contest.

Miss Goggin, 24, who also works as a waitress, snapped the Milibands in the living room of their North London home.

The couple were sitting in front of
a painting they bought to mark the former Foreign Secretary’s 40th
birthday – an £800 portrait of 13 naked dancing women by a local artist
called Michelle Dovey.

Miss
Goggin’s image – reproduced here – won her a Times Young Photographer
Of The Year Award. But for the Milibands and artist Mrs Dovey, a
38-year-old mother of two, its publication this week resulted in
ferocious attacks on their artistic taste and talents.

Best picture: David and Louise Miliband with the painting in their living room

David Lee, editor of the art newspaper The Jackdaw, said: ‘There is no way I would have that on my wall. It looks as if it ought to be in a pole-dancing club rather than the home of the British Foreign Secretary.'

Author and self-styled cultural critic Stephen Bayley was even more vitriolic in The Daily Telegraph.

‘Who does not get a chilling thrill of horror at the sight of The Miliband Painting?’ he wrote.

‘In my own case, the coldly curdled blood is mixed with a delicious voyeur’s sense of delight at the discovery of a hitherto secret (and very horrible) family indiscretion.

A bit like finding a severed head in the linen basket, a gun in the bathroom cabinet, a whip in the downstairs loo.’

Mr Bayley goes on to describe the painting as ‘middle-brow junk’, ‘bad bad art’ and ‘one of those decisions possibly made after lunch’.

‘It exists to confer sophistication – there are nudes! There is vigorous brushwork! We are worldly bohemians! – but in fact confers the very opposite.’

His final judgment: ‘Politicians shouldn’t mess with art.’

So what does Mr Miliband, 45, have to say? Here, in an exclusive article for The Mail on Sunday, he gives his own, equally trenchant riposte . . .

EXCLUSIVE: By DAVID MILIBAND, FORMER FOREIGN SECRETARY

Competition winner: Photographer Naomi Goggin

I am not an art critic. Neither is my wife Louise. But we know a thing or two about the British culture of sneering and unremitting snobbery.

Those ugly traits (along with their frequent bedfellow – cynical, perpetual negativism) have been on display again this week.

A simple, good news story about a young photographer has been used to trash a talented artist for violating that most sacred cow of all: that art should be expensive and elitist to be worthwhile.

Who says class war is dead?

On the day I announced that I was not standing for the Shadow Cabinet, there was a scrum of photographers outside our house. They took their pictures and left. Fine.

Then, ten minutes later, there was a ring at the door. A very polite young woman asked if she could come in and take a picture. British brass neck, I thought. But why another photo?

She explained that she was entering a Young Photographer Of The Year competition. She’d been late arriving at the scrum because she decided to come only at the last minute after a friend suggested this might be an opportunity to get a good picture. Now she wanted to make up for missing out.

Charmed, and impressed by her ingenuity, we agreed to try to help her. She borrowed Louise’s little-used tripod. She took a picture in our ­living room. Louise was on the phone to her sister. The whole thing took 15 minutes. We had a laugh and wished her good luck. End of story.

Except that she won the competition. Six months’ employment and a new camera. And then the trouble started.

On Thursday I got a text from a friend saying that the photo wasn’t the story. Instead, it was the painting that Louise bought for me (and a patterned cushion that I bought for her in Jordan) that are visible in the shot.

They were being used to prove how vulgar and lower-middle-class we were. Pathetic, really.

On Friday I read the article by Stephen Bayley in The Daily Telegraph. Bayley compared the painting to the revelation of a severed head in the laundry basket or a whip in the loo!

In other words, it was the equivalent of being found out as a murderer (Mr Miliband with the axe in the bathroom, in Cluedo speak) or a secret S&M practitioner. What is this guy on?

OK. The painting is not exactly a
conventional still life of a bowl of fruit. It has a dozen nude women.
They are dancing. The women look happy and free. They certainly don’t
look as if they are worried about the prying eyes of Stephen Bayley.

They make us laugh. They make sure
Louise and I look on the bright side of life. And when people say where
did you get it, we tell them. Not Christie’s. Not the trendy Camden
Market. Not any market at all, in fact.

Louise and I bought the painting for
my 40th birthday five years ago. Mr Bay­ley says that politicians
shouldn’t mess with art. But what a give­away! Sorry, Mr Bayley, I
didn’t buy the painting as a politician.

Private pleasure: The ex-Foreign Secretary says the painting makes him and his wife laugh and look on the bright side of life

I was (still am) a husband. It was a birthday present, not a contribution to the Government Art Collection.

Stephen Bayley also says it is ‘the sort of thing you can find arriving in Ford Transits at the dreadful Affordable Art Fair in Battersea Park’.

And there is the rub. Affordable equals dreadful. What Bayley cares about is how much it cost.

No, we didn’t go to an auction house or one of Bond Street’s fine-art dealers. That’s not our end of the market. We are middle-class. There’s no denying it. But what’s wrong with that?

We bought a picture for £800 that we liked – not £2,000, as one report had it.

It is by a young artist called Michelle Dovey. We had seen one of her paintings at a friend’s house. My God, there were nude women in that, too. Better not let Stephen Bayley know their address in fashionable Dartmouth Park. Better not let him know what influential position they have, what corruption of young minds could be under way.

If you tap her name into Google, Michelle Dovey has an exhibition on the web showing off her paintings. Five years ago she was selling her paintings in a loft in East Hackney. It wasn’t a fashionable loft. It wasn’t in Battersea or Camden. And there was no Ford Transit involved (would a Merc have made it OK?).

I remember we went to Hackney on a Friday. Up some winding stairs in an old warehouse that had been converted into artists’ studios.

The building was going to get an Olympics bounce – and presumably the artists given the shove.

Michelle Dovey was there when we turned up. Painting, as you do if you are a painter. Not pushy or precious. Rather modest and unassuming, in fact. I think there was a stewed cup of tea. No fags. There were pictures on the walls and in stacks.

I remember Louise and me liking the colours and joyfulness of the dancing women. The painting was for us, not anyone else.

Sadly, no one told us we had to ­sub­mit it to Stephen Bayley for his official stamp of cultural approval.

Bayley says: ‘The Miliband Painting is not even bad. It is middle-brow junk.’ I have no idea if Michelle Dovey is going to be known in 100 years for her painting. We didn’t buy the painting as an investment or an alternative to a Picasso. We bought it because it put a smile on our faces. And yes, we could afford it.

If I want to see great pictures, I would go to the National Gallery. Or to Florence or Rome.

I do know the difference between a Giotto and a Piero della Francesca or a Matisse and a Michelle Dovey. There is such a thing as great art. It is one of the wonders of the world.

But great art from down the cen­turies – or even recent vintage – is not available for me to put on the wall of my family living room.

So we started with what we could afford and what we liked. If we thought it was junk, we wouldn’t have bought it.

If you like our painting and want one like it, Michelle’s subject has now changed to something far more safe. She’s into trees.

As for me, I know I like our naked dancing women more every time people like Stephen Bayley attack it.